One of the world’s largest banks has released a report analyzing the economic case for investing heavily in clean energy technology — and the results may surprise you. 

The public Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) sector is rapidly evolving and has recently crossed the trillion-dollar threshold in total capitalization. In addition, there are many new REITs in registration under the Jobs Act, and public REITs actually had record industry index investment returns in 2014. However, there are still strides to be made, specifically when it comes to how REITs determine their property management structure. 

Back in 1967, Lyndon Johnson was our President, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band topped the Billboard charts, a gallon of gas only cost 33 cents, and the homeownership rate was 63.3 percent.

In the second quarter of 2015, Barack Obama was our President, See You Again topped the Billboard charts, a gallon of gas cost $2.80 and was considered cheap, and the U.S. homeownership rate fell below 63.5 percent for the first time in 48 years!

Infrastructure is often mentioned in the same breath as real estate. Both are long-term, income-producing real assets. But real estate has been part of institutional portfolios for decades now, while infrastructure is much newer. As such, fewer investors have allocations to infrastructure than to real estate, and those allocations tend to be smaller than their other real assets buckets.

Defining your niche or practice specialty is the first step in developing a long-term growth plan for your business as a financial adviser. A niche will not only help you identify your target customers, it will also allow your practice to run more efficiently, help increase referrals, recruit new partners or even find the right fit if you are considering changing firms or affiliations.

For investors, being able to benchmark their performance is crucial. They do not need to outperform the benchmark — though they always hope to — but they certainly do not want to do worse than the market. In addition, benchmarks help investors pinpoint the areas of a diversified asset class that fit the risk-return parameters for their portfolios.

You have probably heard it from some of your clients: How will rising interest rates affect my portfolio wealth, and how can I protect it? How should I adjust my portfolio, and when?

How can you help them calm their fears and keep them from making the wrong move at the wrong time — and perhaps even blaming you?

Many things in life are not a matter of “if” but “when.”

No, I’m not talking about death and taxes. I’m talking about something more inevitable than taxes — given that many do not pay taxes — and less inevitable than death, which is the great equalizer among rich and poor and all living things.

Consider some of the high-tech drought solutions featured at California’s first water technology summit this summer in Sacramento.

Like most advisers, you may often find yourself pressed for time, with seemingly not enough hours in the day to effectively run your practice and position your business for growth. On average, advisers report spending just 60 percent of their time in client-facing activities, with the rest divided between administrative activities, investment management, and raining/professional development, according to Cerulli Advisor Metrics.

Alternative investment strategies continue to offer the potential for increasingly unique sources of enduring diversification. It may be helpful to examine the growth of alternatives. The NACUBO–Commonfund Study of Endowments over the past 10 years shows that in June 2012, endowments allocated 54 percent of AUM to alternative strategies. The alternatives allocation breakdown is 36 percent to hedge fund strategies, 25 percent to private equity, 15 percent to energy and natural resources, 13 percent to private equity real estate, 7 percent to venture capital, and 4 percent to distressed debt.